


The Bishop's Dilemma

by disillusionist9



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Chess Metaphors, Drinking, F/M, Forced Marriage, Heavy Angst, Infidelity, Minor Character Death, Not Epilogue Compliant, Smoking, Songfic, Swearing, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 16:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8020933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disillusionist9/pseuds/disillusionist9
Summary: Chess is well ordered for a reason, and the pieces that try to move against their rules risk costly consequences.





	The Bishop's Dilemma

**Author's Note:**

> "We only said goodbye with words, I died a hundred times. You go back to her, and I go back, I go back to us."
> 
> tumblr prompt for pumpkin-dream, based on Back to Black by Andre 3000 and Beyonce, originally by Amy Winehouse (this could potentially evolve into a longer story)

Nylons made her feel homicidal.

Dressed head to toe in black, her favorite color, she felt betrayed by the intense discomfort the clothes were putting her through. Had the servants dumped starch in the wash, or something? Brand new men's dress shirt collars had more give than her skirt. At least her garter was still neatly concealed beneath the pressed folds, holding the essentials: a flask of firewhiskey and pack of Marlboro Red 100s.

"Those people didn't care about him."

"Cool it, Greg," Pansy hissed, her teeth starkly white against red lipstick. Her hand snuck from beneath the black mink stole she'd dug out of the corner of her closet to clutch his. "Keep it together for Daphne, if no one else."

Greg Goyle's eyes searched hers for a few seconds, before nodding curtly at her, and burrowing closer to the woman tucked into his other side. Blonde hair poked beneath the velvet hood and curled in the breeze that couldn't make up its mind if it wanted to blow in the threatening snowfall or not. The squeak of expensive leather covered the sound of a shuddering breath as Daphne held on tighter to Greg's hand.

Pansy turned back to tune into whatever the boring muggle religious man was saying over the closed coffin. Phrases in Italian like _heavenly father_ and _at rest_ rushed through one ear and out the other, the meanings pointless during the charade before them.

No one in her group understood why the magically sealed last will and testament of Blaise Zabini required his body be placed in a non-magical ceremony, until that will also discloses the identity of his father. A man who'd renounced the wizarding world after Elora divorced him, but could not kill him as she truthfully had done to the others, and he went into hiding within a monastery. Blaise was seldomly sentimental in life, and Pansy doubted even the idea of an afterlife would do more than make him snort in laughter, but it was what he'd requested and what they'd seen to.

But he'd been the best at keeping secrets, hiding his degenerative disease until the last month of his life. He could certainly hide an interest in what lay beyond death. Or even a sense of closeness to his real father.

Pansy watched them lower her smoking partner, her one time lover, and constant friend into the cold dirt with shuttered eyes, and wished it were appropriate to throw a lit cigarette down there with him. She liked to think he would have laughed at that.

Handshakes exchanged with the men and swift hugs between women followed. Bile choked her as she went through the motions, wishing Blaise was there to place a gloved hand at her waist for support, rather than resting in the worst real estate he'd ever purchased. Truly, he'd managed to purchase a plot between two crumbling brick buildings that a stiff wind could knock over, only a few dozen yards from a rocky dirt road. As Minister the notion was implied that better could be afforded, but of what she knew of Blaise, there was more than met the eye with this move. Calculating, even on his deathbed.

A different familiar, and unwelcome, hand found its way to her back, closer to her shoulders than hips or waist. "The transport is prepared, ma'am."

"Daphne and Greg are to join me," she hissed to her escort, itching to throw off the protective hand.

"Yes, ma'am."

Pansy stood on Daphne's left to barricade the mourning Minister's wife from undue scrutiny as she said her final goodbyes to the husband she'd barely known. Greg held her from falling, and did his best to carry her without making it look like he was doing so once the trio walked away from the gravesite. Draco, who'd been silent the entire ceremony, clutched the hand of the Acting Minister Hermione Granger, and stalked several paces ahead of them.

The bright red Auror robes were traded for the deep black reserved for fallen comrades and leaders. They did nothing to diminish the midnight quality of the hair of the Head Auror leading a procession of protection for the small mourning group leaving the cemetery.

Harry held the door open for each member of the Wizengamot and senior leadership of the Ministry as they moved to depart the undisclosed location. The hand he'd placed on Pansy's shoulder not two minutes before was extended for support up the steps into the invisible carriage. She refused to meet his gaze, and instead lifted one leg up onto the first step, her foot missing and falling rapidly, until Harry caught her by the bicep.

Muttering curses about the tightness of her skirt tripping her and using invisible transport, she pushed away from the chest she'd last draped over two months ago. The first compartment was full after Hermione's robes swept over the barrier, so Pansy turned right to sit with Daphne and Greg. When she opened the door, Greg pushed back against it.

"She…she can't, Pans," he explained, his voice halting and resigned.

A glimpse of blonde hair covering the back bench, shoulders shaking, Pansy set her jaw and nodded. Pulling the door back to shut, she landed heavily on one of the few stools in the midway between the two carriage compartments. The cold outside air was cut off as she moved a cigarette to her lips.

"Care to share?"

"Not with you."

"Fine."

Harry sat on a bench opposite her, raised his wand to cast a siphoning charm to remove the smoke and smell from the closed quarters, and tapped on the window to signal the dignitaries were prepared to go back to London. The other Aurors on duty were on each corner of the invisible carriage on brooms, and Pansy wished Harry was stuck out in the cold with them, too.

"Mrs Zabini-"

"Does not need you, Potter," Pansy snapped, turning to look at Harry for the first time that day. A few ashes were disturbed from the end of the long cigarette as her movement disturbed their precarious balance, charmed to vanish before they hit her clothes or the floor. They sat so closely, with two rooms full of mourners at their backs, their knees brushed with every slight bump of their travel, but neither one moved to sit further away.

"Pansy, you're being-"

"It's Madame Mulciber to you, you fucking prick."

Harry leaned forward on his elbows, hands fisted and shaking. "Pansy. You will always be _Pansy_ to me, no matter how much of a bitch you are."

"Do you use that tone of voice with your _wife_ , then? No wonder I found your hands up my skirt-"

"Not today!"

The sharpness of his tone startled her into silence. Harry never raised his voice like that anymore, not like at Hogwarts. This Harry was all buttons and convictions and rules. It had been part of the charm to attempt to seduce him, at first, all part of the game. Office politics, or some such. But she'd seen the monster caged beneath the restrictions he placed on himself, just never directed at her.

"Not today," she repeated softly, the fingers hiding beneath the stole shaking slightly. "Blaise deserves better."

"And so do we," Harry said, much softer than before but still with the warning of cracks in the mortar.

With his ceremonial hat placed neatly on his lap, and fingers folded again, Pansy could see the way he trembled and how his eyes flashed between dead and on fire. She wanted the fire, as much as it scared her. Blaise had always called her a damned moth: beautiful, slightly disturbing at the best of times, and too fixated on the one thing that would kill her. Only her sense of self-preservation saved her until now, with a few battle scars on her wings to attest to lapses in judgement. Most of them… _all of them_ caused by the man sharing closed quarters with her and struggling to maintain control.

The last acrid pull from her second cigarette built a moment of tension that choked her more than her bad habit. Her next breath was stolen from her lips before it made it to her lungs as Harry rushed at her and placed his hands on her thighs, face centimeters from her own. His head was bowed, and their only physical connection was the way he pushed her deliciously down into the soft cushions, but Pansy felt like he'd rushed down her throat to consume her.

"Either we do this," he said, speaking through gritted teeth. "Or we don't. Hermione will be Minister, which will make you her Undersecretary and if anyone finds out-"

"Let alone Florin or Susan," she gasped, her resolve crumbling as surely as her cigarette ashes, trying to ground them by stating the names of their appointed spouses.

"Anyone, Pansy. If _anyone_ finds out, then the charade of this damned marriage contract law might not be something we can destroy. And I want it gone. I want it struck down. And I. Want. You."

Harry threw himself back against the opposite bench, both of them gasping as if they'd been sprinting.

In a sense they were: sprinting towards a future neither were certain of, now that their king was buried, the queen falling apart and comforted by a pawn, and the king's knight forced to take the crown, the task was left to the bishops in the center of the carriage. What the bishops conveniently forgot, was the rules of chess required them to remain on opposite squares of the board, and meeting would require breaking the delicate balance each player had spent so long to create and protect.


End file.
